Why Does College Cost So Much?

Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman

The major difference between this book and most others in higher education finance is the aerial view. This aerial view causes the reader to look at other industries as well as higher education.

The authors look at higher education as an industry that has to make its way in the economy just as do other industries.

Archibald and Feldman's broader view uncovers similar cost behavior in many other industries and causes us to have to find an explanation covering other industries as well as higher education

Why Does College Cost So Much?

Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman

Description

College tuition has risen more rapidly than the overall inflation rate for much of the past century. Over the last thirty years, tuition growth has accelerated. The rhetoric of crisis now permeates public discussion of the cost of attendance. Much of what is written about colleges and universities ties rapidly rising tuition to dysfunctional behavior in the academy. Common targets of dysfunction include prestige games among universities, gold plated amenities, and bloated administration.

This book offers a different view. To explain rising college cost, the authors place the higher education industry firmly within the larger economic history of the United States. The trajectory of college cost is similar to cost behavior in many other industries, and this is no coincidence. Higher education is a personal service that relies on highly educated labor. A technological trio of broad economic forces has come together in the last thirty years to cause higher education costs, and costs in many other industries, to rise much more rapidly than the inflation rate. The main culprit is economic growth itself.

This finding does not mean that all is well in American higher education. A college education has become less reachable to a broad swathe of the American public at the same time that the market demand for highly educated people has soared. This affordability problem has deep roots. The authors explore how cost pressure, the changing wage structure of the US economy, and the complexity of financial aid policy combine to reduce access to higher education below what we need in the 21st century labor market.

This book is a call to calm the rhetoric of blame and to find instead policies that will increase access to higher education while preserving the quality of our colleges and universities.

Why Does College Cost So Much?

Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction 1.: The Landscape of the College Cost Debate 2.: Higher Education All That Unusual?Part 2 Costs 3.: Higher Education is a Service 4.: The Costs of Employing Highly Educated Workers 5.: Cost and Quality in Higher Education 6.: The Bottom Line: Why Does College Cost So Much? 7.: Is Higher Education Increasingly Dysfunctional? 8.: Productivity Growth in Higher EducationPart 3 Tuition and Fees 9.: Subsidies and Tuition Setting 10.: List-Price Tuition and Institutional Grants 11.: Outside Financial Aid 12.: The College Affordability CrisisPart 4 Policy 13.: Federal Policy and College Tuition 14.: Financial Aid Policy 15.: Rewriting the Relationship between States and their Public Universities 16.: A Few Final ObservationsAppendix 1 Data on Costs and PricesAppendix 2 Granger Causality Tests of the Bennett HypothesisNotesBibliographyIndex

Why Does College Cost So Much?

Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman

Author Information

Robert B. Archibald, Chancellor Professor of Economics, College of William and Mary, and David H. Feldman, Professor of Economics, College of William and Mary

Robert Archibald teaches economics and public policy at the College of William and Mary. While he has held several administrative posts, he is regularly promoted back to the faculty. In the past six years, together with David Feldman, he has published widely on the economics of higher education. David Feldman teaches in the economics department and in the Public Policy Program at the College of William & Mary. He has been honored with a University Professorship for Teaching Excellence. In addition to his work with Robert Archibald on higher education he writes about the international economy.